


Help Me

by Phoenixflames12



Series: An Endless Night: Extended Scenes [14]
Category: Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Alternate Universe - World War II, Gen, Gotham's Writing Workshop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-16
Updated: 2018-05-16
Packaged: 2019-05-07 19:28:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14677863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phoenixflames12/pseuds/Phoenixflames12
Summary: 28th March 1942In the aftermath of the bombing of Lubeck, Faith Fraser tends to a German Flight Lieutenant and tries not to think about her Father





	Help Me

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for week 16 of @gotham_ruriadh's 'Gotham's Writing Workshop' over on tumblr

‘Help me!’

 

The words come rushed and blurred through her mouth as she holds the patient’s head, blood seeping through the oil stained bandages.

 

He was an officer, she had seen that when she’d cut away his uniform. His pilot’s wings had been locked away in the tiny wooden box used to house any form of identification, English or Hun, her scissors pulling away the final, filthy remnants of dark blue overcoat and trousers.

 

 His head had lolled dangerously against her shoulder when she had first tried to prop him up to help him drink without choking him, eyes stark and unseeing against the mask of grime and oil and blood.

 

‘What’s your name, lieutenant?’

 

She strives to keep her voice low and steady, as she had so often been told to do so in training, trying to stay calm.

 

His face is a burnt and blackened mess of burst blood clots and bruises beneath the bandages; his mouth a gaping hole where only the thinnest trickle of sickly yellow spittle could dribble out.

 

She had tried to give him fluids, but it was all he could do to retch them back up again, blood and mucus splattered over his battledress. The army doctor, an MO whom she didn’t know had helped her cut away the worst of his tunic, desperately ripping away the restrictions to allow his lungs the space to breathe, telling her in between the rip of blue serge that she was to find a bowl of warm water and some saline solution and a pipette and try to get the man to drink.

 

Their hands had brushed against each other for a moment as they worked, blood stained and calloused, skin on skin and then had parted, the action too fast for either of them to register it.

 

‘ _Punctured lung, nurse. I’d take him to theatre, but it’s full. If anything goes badly array, call for someone immediately. I’ll be back as soon as I can. Do you understand?’_

_‘Aye, Doctor.’_

_Sounding far older than she’d felt, wiping scarlet palms over starched white linen, curls of hair plastered in a sea of sweat under her cap._

_A quiet nod, her eyes only for the pale, clammy features that she can just see through the dark mask of oil and muck._

_He’d nodded curtly, looking suddenly far too young to be holding such a position of great responsibility and left, disappearing into the chaos._

_Leaving her to run to the sluice room, shoes clattering on the rickety wooden stairs, heart hammering, trying not to think._

_Trying not to think of that dishy, young army doctor who in any rational world would be taking girls far older than herself out for dances under the glittering chandeliers of the Inverness ballrooms._

_Trying not to think of all of the pilots, both British and German who risked their lives trying to save their beloved countries for the same reasons and yet…_

_Trying not to think of all the young VADs who had only seen blood in textbooks before today._

_Trying not to think of her Da, incarcerated somewhere in Austria, of her Mam who wept in the bathroom when she thought that all of her children were asleep._

_‘Be my best girl, Faith,’ Da had said on the morning of his departure._

_He’d swung her up into his arms and kissed her forehead, his sharp, homely smell of bracken and kine and woodchips making her sneeze, wrinkling her nose against his tunic._

_‘Love ye, Da.’_

_‘I love ye too, mo nighean ruaidh. Be good, now, aye and mind your Ma and your siblings.’_

_His voice had been a little choked then; slanted cat eyes that matched her own shining with emotions that neither could put a voice to._

 

'F ... Flug ... Entschuldigung ... Entschuldigung, Schwester ...'

 

German.

 

It pulls her back to the present with a shock. Back to the hospital, to the throbbing ache in her knees, as she kneels on the blood stained, parquet floor, holding a German pilot’s head and trying to stem the bleeding from his lungs at the same time. To the aching sting in her eyes, crusted over with blood and exhaustion, feeling heavier than she ever could imagine them being.

 

A German pilot shot down somewhere on the North Sea, caught in the crossfire and tumbled out into those black, frozen waters that were lit nightly by the dying firestorms of shot down planes.

 

_By rights, she shouldn’t even tend to him, but by the oath that she’s sworn, she cannot not tend to him._

 

 _‘Don’t be sorry,’_ she wants to say.

 

_‘Es tut mir nicht leid.‘_

She isn’t sure how she knows that.

 

Instead she grips the cloth harder between her blood caked hands and continues to assert as much pressure as she can on the punctured organs, trying not to listen to the sudden rasping, gurgling sound coming from the throbbing, blackened throat.

 

Trying to bite down the sudden rise of panic that has erupted in her throat at the noise.

 

‘ _Dinna die,’_ she thinks desperately, tearing her gaze from the hooded, blackened eyes for just a moment and staring wildly into the chaos of the ward. ‘ _Please.’_

Later, she will wonder at herself for even thinking such a thing.

From her vantage point on the floor, she can see the stamp of boots against floorboards.  The brush of legs in dark trousers, the swish of long, grey skirts, the bloody remains of an arm protruding limply from a stained sheet, the chaos of voices above her seeming somehow muted, as if her head has been pushed underwater.

 

No one is watching her.

 

‘Help me!’

 

Her voice cracks, the cloth slipping against a sodden, bloody mess of skin, organ and tissue.

 

And then, at last, someone is there.

 

An orderly whom she doesn’t know followed by that dishy young doctor; his face set and strained and white, blood streaked down his cheeks come running, feet thudding over the floorboards.

 

He doesn’t look at her, his eyes only for the patient.

 

‘Help me get him up,’ is all he says, fingers reaching automatically for a pulse on the blackened neck. 

 

‘He’s German,’ she says, the words sounding impossibly childish when they leave her mouth.

 

‘I ken that Nurse, but that’s no’ going to stop me from treating him. He doesn’t have much time left. Help me get him up.’

 

His voice is sharp, impatient at her hesitation, slicing through her heart like a scythe through corn.

 

She nods, a burst of shame flaming against her cheeks.

 

_Of course._

_That bloody Hippocratic Oath that looked past country, race, colour and creed and only saw the need to heal, the need to do no harm._

She cannot stop her hands from shaking as she grips the end of the stretcher, the wooden pole digging into her leg. Each step seems to cause the patient pain; a low, agitated moan echoing deep in his mangled throat.

 

_‚Kein Halt... Genug.... Bitte...‘_

‘I’m sorry,’ she whispers, balancing the stretcher against her legs to try and hold the jolting head in place. ‘I’m sorry that it hurts.’

She cannot stop her lower lip from trembling, her mind from wandering, asking questions that she does not have the answers to.

 

_What if it were Da and I were German?_

_Would I still feel this uneasy then?_

But she cannot find the answers because the stretcher is bouncing into motion against her lower abdomen, her shoulders aching at the strain of it and she is hurrying after the orderly behind the doctor to the operating theatre.

 

It is only when they stop, in the moments before he goes in to scrub down, does he look at her again.

 

His eyes hold that same sunken, exhausted look held by all the hospital staff after a week of heavy hours and no sleep. The irises are deep and hazel, a birth freckle tugging at the corner of his left eyelid, pulling at it so that the eye appears slightly slanted.

 

‘Ye did well there, Nurse Fraser,’ he glances back to the swinging doors, where one of the team is beckoning frantically to him to come in; a small, sad smile crinkling at the corner of his lips.

 

‘Thank ye sir,’ she bobs a curtsey, legs thick and aching under her.

 

Tries to smile.

 

Wants nothing more than to fall where she stands and curl up in some dark corner of this corridor and sleep for an eternity.

 

‘Go and get some rest now. Tell Sister Gregory that I’ve ordered you off duty. Ye deserve it.’

 

The deep hazel eyes are the last thing that she sees before she flees the room.

 

* * *

  _ **Fin**_

 

**Author's Note:**

> Please feel free to read and review!
> 
> Comments, suggestions, constructive criticisms etc are like chocolate to my brain!
> 
> Much love and enjoy x
> 
> German translations: 
> 
> 'F … Flug … Entschuldigung … Entschuldigung, Schwester …’ = ‘Flight… Lieutenant… Lieutenant, Sister’ 
> 
> ‘Es tut mir nicht leid.‘ = ‘don’t be sorry’ 
> 
> ‚Kein Halt… Genug…. Bitte…‘ = No… Stop… Enough… Please…’


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